November 1, 2009 at 10:39 am · Filed under Facebook, web2.0
It’s amazing to me that the same lead gen style setups that swept through the affiliate industry in 2003-2005 have now made their way to Facebook:
In short, these games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of “offers” are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for lead gen-type offers. Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). And it’s also bad for legitimate advertisers.
If you’ll remember, for a $1.00 payout (but eventually up to $2.00 or $2.50 as the market became saturated), publishers could send an email address and zip code (or just email address) of a “consumer” hoping to win their free iPod (and eventually laptops or HD TV’s).
The quality was, of course, terrible. However, this was about getting a one time credit card charge through a miasma of a three step co-reg process.
Amazing that this trick still works, just with new clothes.
“In a few weeks you will not be following people that are not on at least one list as they will be considered either a spammer or irrelevant.” @vinnyohare
Earlier this week, Twitter caused a considerable amount of envy-then-joy as it slowly rolled out its new and important Lists feature to users.
Interestingly enough, there have been a number of affiliate lists popping up and a couple of them are really valuable:
These are just the lists that have included me (obviously the bests lists because of that), but there are already a number of Lists being rolled out by users that focus on affiliate marketing and its various niches such as Geno Prussakov’s valuable affiliate networks list.
Listorious has quickly gained the position as “Lists Central” in the geek community and a search for affiliate there comes up with interesting items like Affiliate Summit ’10’s speakers.
So, the question becomes how valuable are these purely subjective lists beyond just mindshare (which itself is valuable but not always immediate)?
What I think would be incredibly interesting relates roughly to what Market Leverage has put together (although in a sloppy shotgun-the-wall fashion) with their “Fans and Friends” List. Networks or affiliate vendors should already be putting together lists with all of their employees and execs for affiliates to follow. That’s a no-brainer. I’m waiting for Linkshare, Shareasale, CJ etc to realize the immediate return this would provide and do it themselves rather than waiting for an affiliate to do it for them.
Most importantly, Twitter Lists carry a large element of social/link capital with them. What would be interesting is for a network to use Lists in a “spotlight” type of way, highlighting interesting new affiliates, high performers, or just good people on a rotating basis. These would have to be small-numbered lists (20?) akin to Twitter’s oft-maligned but always envied “SUL” or Suggested Users List. These lists would also have to be highly marketed and grow the number of people following in order to bring the social capital, but that wouldn’t be a problem with the market share of the larger networks. And let’s face it… we all love to be on “Best Of” lists.
As Vinny points out, Lists changes the game of RT’s and Follower numbers. All of a sudden those metrics mean much less and how many (or which) Lists you appear on mean everything.
Interesting post on GigaOm that asks the question, but there’s an even more fun discussion on FriendFeed courtesy of Robert Scoble liking the article in his Google Reader Shared Items:
Soon subscribing and following won’t matter. Publishing good stuff that people “like” will matter most with the only little advantage in having a lot of subscribers or followers will be that your good content might reach more people faster. – Charbax
Which is “worth” more? I’d say they are both pretty worthless if you’re a hack and have no idea how to monetize your followers or subscribers (*cough* Sam points finger at himself *cough*). However, their worth is totally dependent on your platform, the audience and how you interact.
Nevertheless, I think it is very telling that the conversation is much better on FriendFeed via Robert’s Google Shared Items… which got there because he “liked” the post.
With this type of activity on Google and especially on Facebook, the future will be very likable, not just subscribable.
Btw, my Google Shared Items page is here if you’d like to follow what I “Like.”
July 31, 2009 at 6:41 pm · Filed under Twitter, web2.0
The decline of the once-robust Neandertal branch of our hominoid family tree gives a fitting analogy to the fate of marketers unwilling to invest time and attention to web trends (ie Twitter):
One possibility is that modern humans were less picky about what they ate. Analyses of Neandertal bone chemistry conducted by Hervé Bocherens of the University of Tübingen in Germany suggest that at least some of these hominids specialized in large mammals, such as woolly rhinoceroses, which were relatively rare.
Marean is not alone in thinking that Neandertals were one-trick ponies. A long-standing view holds that moderns outsmarted the Neandertals with not only their superior tool technology and survival tactics but also their gift of gab, which might have helped them form stronger social networks. The Neandertal dullards, in this view, did not stand a chance against the newcomers.
We homo sapiens are genetically driven with a sense of communicating and interacting. Twitter and the wide variety of social media tools are just more extensions of that biological impulse to gab, chat and form strong social networks in order to survive.
Play the one-trick pony marketer card all you like, just be aware of the future that awaits your species as you wait out the end in a rocky Gibraltar cave at the edge of the continent.
We all know the main userbase of Twitter… trolls and “social media experts.” Both are a hopeless bunch constantly pressing the pigeon button so that they can hear a bell ring and get a little morsel of food. Sad state of affairs really. Take for instance the plight of Trent Reznor of NineInchNails (yes, in my formative teen years I had long hair, black nailpolish and a Downward Spiral tshirt…it was the 90’s…all the kool kids were doing it):
“Yes, I deleted my account and I’ll explain why since somehow someone apparently thinks this is newsworthy,” Reznor writes. (Ed. Note: Guilty.) “Around the time news broke of my engagement, a faction of troublemakers showed up whose sole intent was to disrupt, harass, insult and incite.” Reznor recently announced his engagement to West Indian Girl singer Mariqueen Mandaag, and writes that his Twitter was reply-spammed with harassing responses — everything from racist slurs to wishes he would overdose. “YES — I could (and did) block them,” he notes, “but everyone else reading my replies sees ALL of that nonsense.” Reznor goes on to write that the faulty Replies function, or the @, allowed for a constant spamming that eventually inundated his account.
Or take the exchange that is currently lighting up the ReveNews comment board between myself, Pat Grady, Angel Djambazov, David Lewis, Wayne Porter and a silent-but-deadly @JeffreyMolander:
“Twitter is hugely polluted with garbage. I hear what you guys are saying, and you sound like the people who talked about how useful telemarketing was before it was curtailed by legislation. Same thing with spam. I get that this is different since it’s completely permissioned, but you’re way over hyping it – which does make some of you look like clowns, in my opinion. Sorry if you don’t like that label, but you’ve earned it.
Twitter’s signal-to-noise ratio is akin to a de-tuned AM radio – call it hi fidelity stereophonic bliss if you’d like, but saying something (or tweeting it) doesn’t mean everyone automatically agrees with you. In fact, the more you misconstrue the obvious truth, the brighter your clown makeup glows.”
Ouch.
And here’s the hook: yes, Twitter is populated by trolls, douchebags, insolent narcissists and petty attention thieves. So is the web. The internet is for trolls (and porn). So is humanity.
Twitter represents a ground-shaking earth-quaking technological shift that forces us to stare down into the pool and decide if we are going to fall in love with ourselves and face a particular doom or get up, figure out what we can do better and come have a look later when we’ve made some progress. Twitter achieves this precisely because of its real-time, messy and transient nature.
If your’e a marketer… beware, Twitter is messy. There’s no static ROI. You can’t qualify it on a spreadsheet (easily). However, the payoff is there in the form of the most prescient marketing and social tool we’ve developed on the web. The ability to drill-down, hyper-focus, filter and sort is the duty of every marketer, not a tech platform.
So, stop blaming Twitter for your poor marketing skills or inability to see the forest for the trolls.
Which one is worth more? Apples and Oranges?
The decline of the once-robust Neandertal branch of our hominoid family tree gives a fitting analogy to the fate of marketers unwilling to invest time and attention to web trends (ie Twitter):
